Issue link: https://tmcpulse.uberflip.com/i/818598
t m c » p u l s e | m ay 2 0 1 7 26 26 D isgusting is what he said. Then my darling husband delivered an out-loud, tonsil-bragging, uvula-flagging howl and continued his march to get charcoal. "Don't pretend like you don't know me." I said. "Help me. It got in my eye." "You're on your own, babe," he snorted. "Restrooms are up front." "A bird s*&t on my head," I choked, weaving through the PVC pipes, fertilizer bags, buckets, and air compressors. "And that's it? Not even Kleenex? You could've gotten some bleach, even rubbing alcohol. We are in a hardware store, but you just walk away? You didn't even point me to the bathroom." I ran the water as hot as it could get and squirted some bubblegum-colored liquid out of a soap pump decorated with butterflies and dirty fingerprints. Between the right eye tearing from the bird bomb and the left one burning in sympathy, I calculated the odds of a parasite transporting itself into my brain and balanced that likelihood against liquefying my cornea from the gizzard acid and cleanser I'd just slathered under my eyelids. I am a doctor after all. A gastroenterologist, and I think the worst. Sure, I'll assess the odds, even focus on the positive, but it's to the horrible straight away. A parasite is now making a nest somewhere in my cerebrum. I have scratched my eye beyond repair, and my husband of two decades will ditch me when I need him most. My future was here. No porch rocking in the Tetons in the autumn of our lives. I was dying. Deserted, blind, and paralyzed, victimized by a brain abscess, and destitute because no one gets disability for birds not wearing diapers. So I splashed water in my eye. Again and again and again, and as hot as I could get it. I tried not to notice the exact com- position of whatever fell from the sky, but given the grainy textures, it felt like mus- tard seeds, blackberry pits, and cricket legs souffléd with worm slime. The choices were endless, and I let myself worry about exactly what was going to kill me. Like parasites. Worms infect you when you least expect it. You could be finally taking that trip down the Nile. You're hot and sweaty, decide to jump in, and while you're cooling off, schistosoma are splashing up your urethra. Soon they're kayaking up your blood vessels until they get stuck in the venules of your liver. Then they set up camp, get married, and start a family with their kiddie eggs destroying your lungs and the rest of your liver. Love sushi? Raw fish have rambunctious fluke that love to paddle around the shores of your bile ducts, clog- ging them up and triggering autoimmune storms that cause cancer. And if your feet hurt from walking all day, whatever you do, don't take your sandals off in Louisiana or Vietnam. Strongyloides can squeeze in between bare toes. Next thing you know, you have larvae crawling under your skin and you're coughing up worm litters. My nemesis was probably a pigeon. And given that he didn't bite me, it was probably his breakfast or leftovers from lunch that were about to infect me, but then again, what did I know about birds? All I knew came from Hitchcock, Heckle and Jeckle cartoons, and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, a movie Matt thought was stupid, but I thought was kind of funny. In my travels, pigeons didn't dive-bomb you, they were pretty much vegan. The only messages I imagined scrawled on their ankles were diet tips by grannies in the park. Bread and popcorn—the new healthy carbs. But other than wasting muscle and generating potbellies, stale bread didn't kill you. What else did birds eat? I've seen pelicans dive for fish. I've watched seagulls make off with French fries. Once I saw a grackle peck at a packet of sugar until it broke open so he could lick the gran- ules off the ground. I thought that was pretty smart. It made me think that calling someone birdbrained wasn't all that insulting. Even if I didn't know what they ate, I remembered that guano is high in phosphate and nitrogen (thanks, Pet Detective) and good for fertilizing and spreading seeds. And somewhere, maybe medical school, I vaguely recalled that seeds come with bacteria or fungus that live in intestines and hitchhike to wherever they drop. That means bugs: salmonella, psittacosis, E. coli, or fungus, like histoplasmosis or cryptococ- cus. What else? Viruses … like bird flu, St. Louis encephalitis virus, and, oh my God, Ebola. I grew up in Ohio. I played in that dirt. A lot of people in the Mississippi and Ohio River Valley get histo. The spores love soil contaminated with bat or pigeon poop. I probably inhaled some spores. That would have triggered an upper-respiratory infection. It would explain the calcified lymph nodes on my chest X-ray. It would be the most common cause, but unless you're immune-suppressed, shouldn't be a problem. The next four? Treatable with anti- biotics. But Ebola?!? That was bad, real bad. That's the virus they make movies about. It closed down that Dallas hospital, even got a nurse infected despite precautions. It has almost perfect trans- mission efficiency. Leaves you dying a horrible but colorful death, oozing blood from your eyes, brain, lungs, and skin within days of exposure. No good-byes. No time. No treatment. We live in Houston. That bird could have flown down here after a pit stop in Dallas. No wonder Dad didn't let us have pets. He always said it was because my baby brother with Downs was more vulnera- ble to infections. How my sister cried when he told us Tag-Along had to go. She loved that fuzzy big- nosed lemon pouf duckling she raised for a science class. We thought he was just Droppings A doctor ponders the dangers of bird poop, and more A n e s s a y b y G u l c h i n A . E r g u n , M . D . Illustration: Nadya Shakoor